


A Haunted Goldfish

by Sholio



Series: Free of Surface Ties [27]
Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, White Collar
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, the goldfish deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 15:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8407351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Neal has a rather unusual problem he hopes Diana can help him with.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Halloween seems like an appropriate time to present a new installment of this AU ...
> 
> If you haven't read one of these before, this is part of an AU fusion with the game Fallen London (formerly Echo Bazaar), co-written with frith-in-thorns. This story obliquely refers to earlier stories in this series: [The Search for Sleep](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1105520) and [An Itinerant Physician](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2687102).
> 
> Explanation for aspects of the gameplay referenced here:  
> * You can equip yourself with a Cheerful Goldfish, which lowers your Nightmares. However, it's possible to accidentally convert your Cheerful Goldfish into a Haunted Goldfish, which is basically what's happened here.  
> * Another way to lower your Nightmares is by taking laudanum. (Too much of it turns you into a drug addict and then it starts making things worse ...)  
> * Sinning Jenny, the city's #1 madame, is a recurring NPC in the game.
> 
> This is ENTIRELY frith-in-thorns' fault, and she contributed several aspects of the plot, including the basic premise.

Diana was alone in the solitude of her lodgings and enjoying a rare evening in, when Neal came through the window, looking wild-eyed and carrying a suspiciously large, scarf-wrapped package that sloshed.

Diana tucked her ravenglass knife discreetly back into its protective leather sheath up her sleeve. (Meant to protect her, not it.) The knife hissed quietly at being deprived of blood. "There is a perfectly functional door, you know."

"Is the Physician here?" Neal demanded, eyes darting around.

"No, she's out and about. Itinerant, you know." Diana glanced him over for signs of blood, spider web, or fang holes in his clothing, but saw nothing. He most likely wouldn't have looked that anxious if he were the injured party anyway, and a small worm of worry crawled in her belly. "What's the matter?"

Neal very carefully set the object on her table with a glassy clunk, and whipped off the damp scarf. "I broke Peter's goldfish. Help."

Diana managed, barely, to suppress the laughter that bubbled up in her. He looked so distressed. She leaned down to get a better look at the fishbowl's occupant. She was no expert on goldfish, but she had to admit that this fish looked ... less than well. Its round lidless eyes seemed to stare through the walls of the bowl as if it had seen things no goldfish should see.

The fact that it had lost half its water in Neal's panicked dash through the fog-shrouded streets probably didn't help.

"What did you do to it?" Diana tapped experimentally on the side of the bowl. The fish jerked out of its fin-dangling stupor and fled until it thumped pathetically into the opposite glass wall.

"Nothing," Neal said evasively.

"It started doing this all on its own?" The fish had retreated to huddle in the little coral fixture in the middle of its bowl. One round eye was visible, peeping out with a look of frozen horror.

"Well ..."

"Neal," she said sternly, and then she realized that he, too, was shivering, and his sleeves were damp from fishbowl water and the moist, clinging fog. Neal looked only slightly less haunted than the goldfish. 

Diana got down the bottle of Morelways she'd been saving for a special occasion, and poured a little into a goblet, which she pushed into his hands.

"Drink," she said gently, shoving him to sit in front of the fire.

"Thanks," Neal murmured. He gazed into the wine in his glass, then shuddered and looked away as if he'd seen something he didn't want to see. Instead he looked up at her, appealing. "It was a mistake, Diana. I should have known better."

"What happened?" She poured herself a glass of wine and joined him in front of the fire.

"It's only ... it's helped before, you know, sleeping near the goldfish. It's comforting somehow. So I thought ... this time ..." His gaze fell on the goldfish bowl, and he shivered all over and looked guiltily away. "Ever since what happened in the cave ... and the incident with the ... anyway, there are things in my head, I guess, that goldfish shouldn't see."

Or people, either. Diana touched his shoulder lightly. Neal flinched, almost spilling his wine. "You couldn't have known," she said.

"Yes, but Peter's going to be terribly upset. I thought about borrowing another one --"

"Is this the kind of borrowing where you don't ask the owner beforehand?" she couldn't help asking.

"-- But he'll _know,_ he always does." Neal's beseeching gaze returned to the fishbowl. "Can you think of anything that might help?"

Her first inclination was to say "Take it to the Ferryman and put it out of its misery", but she didn't have the heart. "All right, listen," she said, planting her hands on his shoulders. "I'm going to walk over to Jenny's. She's nursed more than one unfortunate sufferer through a spell of madness. She might have some ideas. Just stay here, have some wine, and stay calm." Reaching for something soothing and helpful to say, she added, "The calmer you are, the calmer the fish will be."

She walked out quickly, wrapping a cloak about herself.

It turned out that Jenny wasn't in, so after Diana had checked at a couple of her regular haunts, she gave up and walked back home through the fog. Neal and his fish would simply have to endure for a bit.

As soon as she opened the door, she knew at once that something had happened in her absence. For one thing, the scarf was back over the bowl, and Neal was huddled by the fire looking even more depressed and distraught than before. The goblet in his hands showed signs of having been recently filled and emptied.

"I thought it would help," he said in the most woebegone voice she'd ever heard.

"You thought _what_ would help?" She lifted a corner of the scarf nervously. The situation in the bowl had changed, and not for the better. The water was slightly cloudy, and the fish, rather than huddling in its castle, was floating upside-down near the bottom.

"... Neal ..." 

There was an odd smell in the air. Diana sniffed, then bent over the fishbowl and sniffed again.

"Neal, would you like to explain why this fish smells like laudanum?"

He gave her a quick, unhappy glance from haunted eyes. "Sometimes when the nightmares get to be too much, just getting a good night's sleep helps. I've used it in the past ... a lot of people have. I thought it might help the fish."

While she was trying to decided whether to laugh, cry, or beat him about the head with her umbrella, an even more unpleasant thought occurred to her. She leaned over Neal to reach behind the fake candlestick on the mantel. The little hide-hole was empty. Diana glared down at the top of his head. "You poured _my laudanum_ into that fish's bowl? An entire bottle of it?"

"I didn't have any," he protested, and then jerked out of his miserable contemplation of the dead goldfish. "Diana, it just moved! I think it might be alive."

"It cannot possibly have survived that," she protested, but Neal was right. A fin seemed to be twitching. 

Neal scrambled to his feet and plunged his hand into the fishbowl. "Fresh water, quick!"

Without waiting for her to say or do anything, he spun around and plopped the fish into her jug of fresh water in the corner.

"Neal!"

He was staring anxiously into the jug. Diana sighed and got a bowl from a shelf. She poured some of the water into it, and lifted out the pathetic, slimy little fish body. Neal was right, she reluctantly admitted; it seemed to be twitching slightly. In the bowl of water, she swished the fish around firmly to get all the laudanum out of it, and then released it into the jug again ... it wasn't as if she was going to want to drink or wash with that water anyway.

The fish drifted slowly toward the bottom, listing sideways. Its fins twitched in an uncoordinated sort of way. Diana had never seen an inebriated goldfish before, but she was pretty sure she was looking at one now.

"It looks happier?" Neal suggested hopefully.

"It looks as high as the cut of Sinning Jenny's skirts," Diana said dryly.

She poured them both some more wine, and they worked together on rinsing out the fishbowl, washing each of the fish's stones and its little castle-shaped ornament. By the time they were done, the fish was swimming crookedly around the jug in odd, lopsided little figure-eight loops. Diana used a teacup to scoop it out, poured the jug water into the bowl, and gently poured the fish after.

It wobbled into its castle and stayed there.

"I really don't think it looks nearly as haunted," Neal said more brightly.

"I think it looks hung over," Diana said, bending over to squint through the glass.

After they'd each had another glass of Morelways, polishing off the bottle, the goldfish had ventured out of its castle and was now swimming around the bowl again, occasionally running nose-first into the walls and bouncing off in a baffled kind of way.

"It's _almost_ like it was," Neal declared with his usual stubborn optimism. "It doesn't look terribly distressed anymore."

No, she thought; it looked more as if he'd managed to wipe out what few brain cells it had started with. However, it did seem much less unhappy -- she would definitely give him that.

"You'd better get it back before Peter notices it's gone."

Neal nodded and quickly bundled it back in the scarf. There was a muffled "bonk" from under the scarf as it ran into the wall of its bowl again.

"Do you think he'll notice?" Neal asked anxiously. "He's going to notice, isn't he."

"You could tell him something got knocked into the tank by accident."

"I hate lying to Peter," Neal complained.

As opposed to stealing and drugging his fish. "I'm sure you'll think of something by the time you get it back. Use the door this time; you won't spill as much water."

In the doorway, Neal paused and looked over his shoulder. "Diana? Thanks."

It was difficult for her to think of a way to respond that wasn't going to invite being made complicit in any subsequent goldfish emergencies, so she merely nodded and smiled. After the door closed behind him, she rose to clean up the mess left over from the night's excitement -- splashed water, empty glasses, and a few bits of fishtank gravel left behind.

Peter was _definitely_ going to notice.

Well, it could be worse, she thought philosophically. He could have decided to fix it by giving it gaoler's honey.


End file.
